Friday, November 16, 2001
[ DIVISION II SPORTS ]
Coming off BYUH's second snub in two years, at least one Seasider decision maker is looking within for the answer. BYUH’s Navalta tries to make
sense of Seasiders’ snubBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comThat one just happens to be the most important of all -- the head coach.
After a week in which Brigham Young-Hawaii administration kept the phones and fax machines busy pleading its team's case for a regional berth -- only to be turned down -- head coach Wilfred Navalta stayed out of it.
He preferred to let athletic director Randy Day and sports information director Scott Lowe try to pull off the impossible, while he concentrated on his day-to-day duties of teaching classes and looking within for the reason why his team stayed home and teams like Seattle Pacific and Cal State Los Angeles are still playing. Both of those teams went into the regional with worse records than the Seasiders.
"What I am going to do is recruit the best I can and try to win the conference," Navalta said. "All of these things (the annual snubs) we can look back on and complain about, or we can try to do a better job of recruiting and coaching. I did not want to get into the politics anyway."
While Day and Lowe are working hard trying to sway the regional selection committee to their way of thinking (selling Hawaii volleyball as equal to or better than that on the West Coast) and trying to convince West Coast schools to schedule them, Navalta is concentrating on holding up his end of the bargain.
"I told the team before the season, 'The only way we are going to go is win the conference,' " Navalta said.
"We are definitely better than two of the teams (in the regional). The funny thing is that had we beaten (Hawaii Pacific one more time; BYUH beat the Sea Warriors twice in three tries), we probably would have gone and maybe HPU would have gotten the snub."
Hawaii Pacific
BYU-Hawaii
Chaminade
U.H. Hilo